FINGER FOOD™

Script for a culinary theatre show based on the myth of King Midas, by Chef Rø [aka Rogério Nuno Costa]. First published in 2015, commissioned by Portuguese art magazine Retina (Issue #1: Myths). It was then adapted for the performance “The War of the Worlds”, premiered at “Pôr-do-Sol nas Virtudes” (Sonoscopia) and Maus Hábitos (Queer Porto Festival). An English version/translation was made in 2018 for the journal “Food and other practices in the Arthouse” edited by Ali Akbar Mehta & Vidha Saumya (Aalto University, Finland).

FINGER FOOD™

A digital comedy, promiscuous and polyamorous, in many acts: a theme party with an interactive performance for an interpassive audience, an indie’gestible cinema festival, a tasting menu provided by Special K’tering (serving culinary experiences since 1998), and a DJ set, of course. All meant to take place in any nightclub in Lisbon and/or Porto during the year 2015. And beyond.

Genre:
Stand-Up Tragedy. Target Audience: Bare Backstreet Boys. Dress Code: All That
Glitters Is Not Gold [subject to free interpretation, provided that it features
a pair of Ancient Greek sandals; mandatory]. Duration: until the MDMA [stands
for “Many Different Masks Allowed”] trip is over. Password: Lame.

A
product by Chef Rø, Creative Industries, Oy. Under the content management of
Rogério Nuno Costa and the participation of at least one queer performer.

Facebook:
rogerio.nuno.costa

Instagram:
rikunuuttikoistinen

Vimeo: chefro

AVANT PROP’S

It doesn’t look like, but this is a recipe. A recipe for SUCKCESS. The SUCKCESS is written in capital letters since it is the name of a character (probably the protagonist) of the play that I am currently writing to accompany the event FINGER FOOD™, which is also the name of a collective, a platform, a company, a project, an organization, a group, a cluster, a startup, and many other territorial congregations coming out of the brand new contemporary neo-feudalism. The SUCKCESS is always dressed up in gold, the favourite seasoning of the poor’tuguese clubbers. And the text is written in a style invented by the Greeks called MEME’sis: silly wordgames, SMS language, smartphone generation, the implosion of capitalism. It’s not a solo, but has selfies. It’s not a group performance, it’s a groupie performance. Inspirations: me, my middle finger, and my fans. It begins with the triumphant entrance of SUCKCESS. Drums, wind machine, conffetti, and the first cue:

— You’re not a foodie! You’re just foodie’do! (Portuguese for “fucked”)

(leaves by the left high
of the stage; SUCKCESS always leaves by the left high of the stage.)

OR D’OEUVRE

Revenge is best tasted cold. If Aristotle was a cook, he would starve. That’s logical. After the tragic departure of SUCKCESS, a Voice explains the meaning of finger food, referring to Lacan’s objet petit a whilst showing an irritating tendency to say velouté instead of puréed soup. Asking who is the man and who is the woman in a homosexual relationship is the same as asking whose finger is the knife and whose finger is the fork in a metrosexual meal. That is: more Fasc’ion than Fashion. Syllogism: since the invention of Language, the World has been evolving backwards. Now the Telescreen reveals an hologram of Carl Sagan showing us in which part of History the Homo Sapiens started to exist, his feet stepping on the last seconds of the 31st day of December in the cosmic calendar. Man is already a man, and yet keeps celebrating réveillon as if there is no tomorrow: a flûte of dead champagne in one hand, eleven raisins still waiting to be eaten in the other, tongue battering the teeth, a line of blood dropping out the left nostril. The Voice shuts up. A big canvas with a printed image of Warhol’s Campbell soup can starts coming down the cyclorama. Sound landscape: a glitch resonance, resembling a scratched vinyl, of Samantha Fox moaning “Touch me, touch me, I wanna feel your body”. Clapping. Enters the King. He has no clothes, of course, but hanging H&M and Zara labels can easily be seen. Vociferating:

— Man wills, the Work dreams, God is born!

(and leaves by the right
high; the King always leaves by the right high.)

MOUTH-CHEER

In the backstage, the performers stick their fingers in Acipenser Ruthenus sturgeon’s caviar, the only naturally golden food product known in nature. They ignore the etimology with the same repudiation they show for the wheat crackers, but don’t mind indulging in vodka shots and rushing to the toilets too many times. According to a new Orthographic Agreement, bohemia is now written booh!emia. Outside, the audience is being fed with crudités; gastronomic pedophilia meets vegan nazism meets severe sexual dysfunction. Little girls (both sexes), dressed up in Made in Bangladesh from head to toe, yawn their mouths out; they switch off their iPhones to save battery, drowning in their own soporific vanity. There’s one who stands up: ironic shirt, transgender headband, super-tight tights climbing up her ass. She remains still for some seconds, three-quarter position, duck face, bended wrist, then gaggles:

The performers leave the backstage. They are extremely focused, but pretend to be relaxed, walking on a white linoleum (brand: EUROPA™) with their gourmet colored sneakers. The linoleum shines, it seems to have own light, looking exactly the same as all the other white linoleums featured in all the other spectacles we’ve already seen. It is concave and convex at the same time. It is vegan. The performers do some neutral movements with their arms and necks, as if they were saying: “This is neither meat nor fish”. Just like the spectators, who remain darkly seated, while eating Belgian™ cookies they brought from the foyer. One of the actresses ultimately wiggles her head, glaring at the audience, lastly reciting, with a fashion blogger voice intonation:

— Tzatziki is the new guacamole.

(and keeps on sliding
her sturgeon-scented fingers through the white linoleum, pretending to be poor,
though anxious to return to the backstage, where she pretends to be rich.)

INTERMEZZO

The spectators read the
synopsis:

“Cosplay, orコスプレ (Japanese: kosupure), is the portmanteau word that
agglutinates costume and play (or roleplay), and refers to a playful activity performed by human
beings who love to dress up as characters. Those characters can come from anime and manga-inspired videogames, cinema, music, comics, but also vintage
theatre, gastronomy, and Nightlife™ (a recent cosplay movement where the
players pretend to be in a REAL party, and that party is being REALLY amazing, and
everybody is having so much REALITY fun together). The goal is to give a form (without
content) to that generic and trans-epochal idea that we can call “meta-theme
party” (the operational concept that grounds all cultural/artistic production since
Man started writing the word Man with
a capital letter until nowadays). As Slavoj Žižek points out…”

(the
reading is interrupted by the gong; the audience is called for the second part
of the Fake Yoga session.)

MAIN COURSE

The scenery is
one of those Euro-cosmopolitan entrepeneurship cathedrals that serve raw cakes and
chia smoothies. Many individuals, showing their ankles in rolled up slim fit
trousers and sockless shoes, are eating ruccula, mozzarella and dried tomatoes in
fair trade slices of bread that look like having been polished, varnished and
trimmed in Photoshop. The room is covered in rustic-wannabe wallpaper, retro
lamps and fake antique souvenirs. All the waiters have a degree in Graphic
Design: they all have Helvetica faces. The speakers spit some trendy easy-listening
album with a warranty seal by Pitchfork. Drums. Enters the PATRON SAINT OF
CLICHÉS, wearing a dress that is white & gold for those who believe, and
black & blue for those who believe they believe. She brings a Madonna-like
microphone, it looks as if she is about to give a TED talk, but she actually speaks
the language of an artistic director. She calls for the A(R)THLETE, who appears
on stage wearing an Emerging Artist mask:

PATRON SAINT
OF CLICHÉS — Hey, you, vainglorious! Come here! I am planning to open a
restaurant called El Bullying! What do you think? (laughs)

A(R)THLETE (speaking in Continental English) — Oh
my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! I don’t know!!! Am I gonna die? (calling) The Great Other! The Great
Other!! Where are you, The Great Other? Can I answer this question, The Great
Other? Oh no… (throws up)

PATRON SAINT
OF CLICHÉS — You stupid scoundrel! Didn’t you understand that my question had a
trap? I was testing your conceptual endurance, your social stamina, in order to
assess your ability to stand on your knees until the next season. Praying, no
staggering! Or are you one of those who bites the hand that feeds you when the opportunity
arises?

A(R)THLETE (bowing to receive the gold medal) — I
promise I will refrain from doing any work that might be affiliated to some
context-oriented art movement, or inspired by the critique of power and
politics, or addressing subjects of identity, posthumanism or queer studies. As
far as I know, that’s the air du temps.
And I’m intolerant to air du temps!
If I breathe air du temps, I can hyperventilate,
get swollen, and start feeling an uncontrollable desire to do workshops…

PATRON SAINT
OF CLICHÉS — OK, enough! Time for handing out some brochures…

(They both leave, arm-in-arm, heading to the vernissage.
The most frequent word they say is “interesting”.)

DESSERT

Enters Rogério Nuno Costa dressed up as Facebook. Observes the audience with the exact same condescending gaze he has been rehearsing every day in the mirror since 1978. Playbacking his own voice:

— If we are what we eat, then we also are what we shit.

(leaves; there’s nothing
more to do than leaving.)

(blackout.)

DIGI’ESTIVE LIQUEUR

My fingers
hurt for having touched so much. (Do not try this at home!) This text, being a
recipe for success, has to be thrown out of the window. It is there, in the
outside, that the secondary effects, written in very small letters, may be read,
but only by those who are patient, or who have totally lost their patience for
Patience. Thus this text, this recipe, should be seen through a magnifying
glass. Selective myopia. For all that glitters is not gold, it’s just cheap
spraying and Instagram filters. That among the poor, a camouflaged man is king.
That success is not for everybody, it is for everything. That this is just a
serving suggestion: the milk is white glue and the fruits are made out of
plastic. That theatre shows are the front and back, all at the same time, of an
American™ package of breakfast cereal. That the best sellers are the Lucky
Charms, twink’le twink’le little stars with fashionable hairdos, big on social
(chla)mydia. That reading is fundamental, but with modesty. That vegan does not only apply to food; also
tourism, spirituality, science, art, economy, sports, charity, and journalism
can be vegan — more chaff than wheat!
We’re all eating seitan steaks that taste like beef, soon to become beef steaks
that taste like seitan. Mediocrity is the new avantgarde! And less, I’m really sorry to say, is just less.

Pause.

Poortugal™, The Best Country In The World, Oy, is now this homeopathic medicine
wrapped up in recycled paper, InDesign logo and special discounts for
professionals. Never fails! Just like that Macintosh-lover DJ that make little
mistakes on purpose while playing live so to prove that he is actually playing live. We have to
believe! Fervently! That 0,1% of talent diluted in 99,9% of water can go
unnoticed…

Pause.

In Poortugal™, The Best Country In The World, Oy, there are two recipes
for success: the social one (Life
doesn’t imitate Art, it imitates Facebook), and the artistic one (Life being constantly annihilated by Art, even if
only on Facebook). Both recipes are not equivalent; they don’t complement. For Artists
are nothing but Actors playing the part of Artists. That 0,1% of artistic
recipe diluted in 99,9% of social recipe can go unnoticed…

[Enters Chef
Rø. Monologue:

“There is only
one work of art, the most abstract of all abstractions, and the most powerful
too: Money. All the rest is just cannon fodder. Sadly, we are not all artists. Jobs
for the Beuys! We have been laughing at serious things and we even dare to
demonstrate in front of the Parliament, in our clean neo-punk attires, complaining
for having been raped… By ourselves! Also Midas has been swallowed by his own
vanity, did you know?, chocking in the vacuity of that innocuous gesture that
turned everything into pieces of illusory value…”.

But nobody is
listening to him anymore.]

Pause.

Golden rain is now falling down in the audience, each and every spectator looking at the stage waiting for someone to say “The End”; they refuse to play the fool by clapping in the wrong cue. They refuse to be an audience, so to speak. All the abundant twink’le twink’le little shows that happen everywhere today can be reduced to that moment of foolish indecision, to that redundancy that never ends. That the only art genre that exists is the artistic genre. A very tiny one: Finger Food! We need our fingers to eat, even when we are just eating metaphors, or using our tongue only for speaking. Fade Out. Enters THE AUTHOR, drawing a stage diagonal upon SUCKCESS, ultimately abandoning the stage by the left low, his two middle fingers wagging at the same time. Crying out: